Twitter 11.6 Hours Survey Scam Spreading Virally

Twitter users beware! According to IT security and data protection firm Sophos, a survey scam is currently plaguing Twitter users and bad thing is that they may not even be aware of it. Twitter users have been advised to be wary of tweets stating that the tweeter has spent 11.6 hours on Twitter and exhorting users to try to find out how much time they have spent on Twitter. The catch is that the user has to click on a link in the message, which takes him/her to a page, which attempts to connect a rogue application called ‘Time on Tweeter’ with the user s account.

The offending links are being circulated on Twitter in messages containing the following text:

“I have spent 11.6 hours on Twitter. How much have you? Find out here: [LINK]”

This application then tweets the same text as above, but this time from the victim’s Twitter account and directs the victim to a page presenting a revenue-generating survey, which is again a scam. While this may seem harmless, it is not really know how much private user information the application may extract and make available to unauthorized people.

Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos advised, “Affected users need to revoke the rogue application’s access to their Twitter account immediately, or it will be able to spew out more links from your Twitter page – which could promote spam sites or link to malicious webpages.” He added, “Scams like this are very commonly encountered on Facebook, but are more rarely seen on Twitter – meaning that many users will be sitting ducks to this type of attack. Although Sophos is in contact with bit.ly about closing down the offending link, it’s possible that the scammers will use other links and other names for their rogue applications. So be on your guard, and always think twice before allowing a third-party app to have access to your Twitter account.”